Petrushka 13-6-2009 Sat 8PM
14-6-2009 Sun 3PM
Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall
Dan Zhu made his Carnegie Hall début at the age of 18 performing
the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and now makes his Hong Kong
Philharmonic début with the high spirits and dazzling virtuosity of
Saint-Saëns’s Third Concerto. Paris in the first decades of the 20th
Century was the home of Sergey Diaghilev and his Ballets russes,
inspiring composers such as Debussy and Stravinsky to create some
of their most brilliant and inventive scores.
The Lio brothers 8-2-2009 Sun 3PM Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall
In Respighi’s charming suite, the music of baroque composers is
revisited in each delicate portrait of a dove, a hen, a nightingale
and a cuckoo. Outstanding young pianists Lio Kuok-wai and Lio
Kuok-man join forces in Saint-Saëns’s playful and exuberant parade
of the animal kingdom in which he pokes out his tongue at a few
composers of the 19th Century, including Rossini and Mendelssohn.
The looming shadow of fate is cast over the whole Tchaikovsky’s
Fourth Symphony from its menacing opening fanfare, but the
symphony’s frenetic final pages ultimately manage to escape destiny
in a desperate race at breakneck speed.
The Nodame Maestro 18-10-2008 Sat 8PM
19-10-2008 Sun 3PM
Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall
Czech conductor Zden k Mácal has conducted all of the greatest
orchestras all over the world but recently reached an entirely new
and vast audience through his appearances as Sebastiano Vieira in
the hugely popular Japanese TV series Nodame Cantabile. A revered
authority in the music of his homeland, Mácal leads Dvo ák’s
rousing Seventh Symphony and is joined by Malaysian-Chinese
pianist John Chen, winner of the 2004 Sydney International Piano
Competition, in Rachmaninov’s darkly passionate Second Piano
Concerto.